Emmy Awards Recap: Awesome and Awkward

It’s game time, fellow superfans. The long off-season is over and it’s time for kickoff!

For the next five months we’ll be predicting, wagering, diagraming, cheering, groaning, and drinking as we watch our favorites win and lose.

That’s right, folks, it’s the best time of the year: Awards show season.

Kicking things off, as usual, is my second favorite of the visual medium awards shows (a term I like to throw around every now and again because it makes me feel like I know what I’m talking about…which I do not), the Primetime Emmys.
What, you don’t have a hierarchy of awards shows? It’s okay, you can share mine if you want.

1. The Golden Globes — The magical night where television and movies collide—not to mention all the beautiful stars of both—and the champagne flows. I hear they even have it at the actual ceremony.

2. The Emmys — Despite the fact that most of the nominees are shows and people I don’t actually watch, I love it. I mean, it’s a celebration of television, so in my world it’s ranks right up there with Christmas Day.

3. The SAG Awards — Shared tables of food, booze, and Xanax? Count me in, Hollywood. And if you do, I’ll even eat your untouched food so no one knows you have an eating disorder.

4. The Academy Awards — While certainly glamorous, the Oscars don’t thrill me as much as bore me. But since I don’t want to have to hand in the laminated member-of-the-Academy ID card I made myself years ago on Microsoft Paint, I watch.

5. The People’s Choice Awards — Since I am one of the people who vote tirelessly every year you’d think TPCA would rank higher, but the fact that the winners know in advance and the other nominees don’t even bother showing the eff up makes me angry watch, which is actually a little bit more fun than it sounds.

Last night’s Emmy awards were all kinds of awesome, but don’t worry, John Travolta was in attendance to make sure there was still plenty of awkward.

Same way I feel about your hairpiece, ZUKO

Let’s break things down.

Awesome:Kristen Bell looking like she stepped straight out of Arendelle. The fact that it almost looks like she had Fräulein Maria fashion her dress from the curtains or maybe a duvet cover actually works…and thankfully, so does her boob tape.

I wasn’t kidding about the boob tape, and neither was she.

Awkward:The table runner Sarah Hyland threw on over her Gap capris. Not everyone can pull off household tapestry, SARAH.
Awesome:Priyanka Chopra’s bright, flowy chiffon dress that she twirled around in like an excited little girl at every photo stop so we could all see how her pretty skirt flew out and drifted around her legs.

Awkward:
When she kept the twirling up even when she walked on stage to present an award, you know, in case we all missed it the first 378 times she did it.

Awesome:
Tina Fey’s simple, classy, elegantly draped kelly green dress that made her look like a gorgeous, ethereal Greek Goddessy mermaid.Awkward:
Sarah Paulson, who evidently got caught on some seaweed on her way in on Hollywood Blvd. and IS PISSED AS HELL ABOUT IT.

Awesome:
Kerri Russell killing it with a side view of that backless dress and train.

Awkward:
Kerri Russell killing the look entirely when we got a glimpse of the front and somehow felt like fingerpainting.

Awesome:
Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy. Couple goals despite the fact that he looks like he smells like garbage.Awkward:
Couple goals if you are crazy AF.

Nice of him to bring Marie Osmond along

Awesome:
Emilia Clarke, looking like she was poured into a second skin. But totally not in a creepy way.

Awkward:
The weird bumps that you could see through her dress from an undergarment she doesn’t need to be wearing because she’s literally the size of a cricket not the mention the effing MOTHER OF DRAGONS. Also Awkward:
Claire Danes’s gold dress that she apparently laid out in the sun on. FOR TWELVE HOURS.

Awkward and more Awkward:
These beautiful ladies, who apparently couldn’t find anything to wear so they had to raid their grandmother’s attics.

If I love her new show as much as I hate this dress I’ll be happy

Maude called and wants her dress back.

Might be pretty if it wasn’t made of mosquito netting. If it didn’t have the veil cape. If I look at it again later after a couple of glasses of wine. Or a bottle. IF I COULDN’T SEE HER CROTCH. On a positive note, my current hairstyle–the one I woke up with that is two days past needing washed–is totes the same. Stars—they’re just like us!

Awesome and Awkward:
Kirsten Dunst’s boobs.

Awesome:
Jimmy Kimmel’s opening, which incorporated OJ’s white Bronco chase and the Dunphys from Modern Family, but especially the Veep bit with Jeb Bush as the chauffeur (“Jeb exclamation point!”)…

Even more Awesome (and the most awesome of the night’s awesome):
When Kimmel and my spirit animal James Corden channeled their inner Wham! and recreated the “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” video.

Sidenote from 1986:I was obsessed with Wham! in high school and wore my Choose Life t-shirt to school all the time. Once a teacher pulled me aside and sternly asked me to explain the meaning. “Uh, it’s like totally Wham? Like George Michael wears it? In the video?” I remember stammering. “Oh, then,” she said. “I thought it was relating to abortion and we don’t allow propaganda here at school.” I walked away, not annoyed that my teacher was being oppressive but that she was a total idiot because she didn’t know who George Michael was, naturally.

Timeout for an awesome dance break ~

Awesome:
Sarah Paulson bringing the real Marcia Clark as her date.

Even more Awesome (for Marcia Clark, at least):
The fact that the 2016 Marcia Clark looks nothing like the 1995 Marcia Clark.

Awesome:
Larry David’s tribute to the late Garry Shandling and The Fonz’s tribute to the late Garry Marshall.

Awkward:
My shock to discover Dennis Franz is still alive.

Seriously, I thought he died years ago

Awesome:
Matt Damon chomping on an apple and ridiculing Jimmy Kimmel for losing. Their feud never gets old.

Awkward:
Jimmy Kimmel ridiculing the fabulous Dame Maggie Smith over and over for not ever being there to accept her Emmy.

Awesome:
Julia Louis-Dreyfus setting a record by winning her fifth consecutive Emmy for Lead Actress in a comedy for her brilliant, hilarious, perfect portrayal of Selina Meyer in Veep and holding her speech together until the final moments when, shaking visibly, she thanked her father who had died only days before.

Awkward:
The fact that so many people thought Richard Dreyfus died that he had to take to Twitter to prove otherwise.

I’m actually not Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ father. But I really appreciate all the concerned tweets. https://t.co/4heUxufeOa

Also Awkward:
• Jimmy Kimmel stealing Ellen’s Oscar bit (pizza) and Chris Rock’s Oscar bit (Girl Scout cookies) and passing out food (pb & js) to the starved celebrities, which was made a little bit awesome because he had the kids from Stranger Things handing them out on their bicycles (which is yet another show I’m apparently supposed to be watching but don’t).

• The announcer introducing Bill Cosby as the next presenter and making all the females nervous. Hell, even I put my hand over my drink at home.

Also Awesome:• Young Rami Malek winning for Mr. Robot (a show I keep meaning to watch) and being visibly shaken and humbled. “Please tell me you’re seeing this, too,” he said as he took his award from the also awesome Allison Janney.

• Jimmy Kimmel blaming Mark Burnett for Donald Trump, because really, don’t we all want to just blame somebody?

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pamb -One slight correction, it was Jeffrey Tambor who gave the tribute to Garry Shandling. He played Garry’s sidekick Hank on the Larry Sanders Show (his catchphrase was ‘hey now’, which is why he said it before the montage).

Because I am OLD, I was in college when Wham first appeared in the US as Wham UK. I had to go to the indie record store to buy the expensive import version of their album, and felt SO COOL.Wikipedia Wham UK Fantastic to se the boys in motorcycle jackets. No, I still don’t have the album 🙁ReplyCancel

Snarkfest-OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO KELLY PRESTON?????
You nailed it, she’s TOTALLY morphed into Marie Osmond, except Mormons and Scientologists aren’t supposed to intermingle, are they? I hope they don’t get caught!ReplyCancel